Links With Your Coffee - Wednesday
- 'Vote on freedom of expression marks the end of Universal Human Rights' by International Humanist and Ethical Union - RichardDawkins.net (Oh, this is not good news.)
For the past eleven years the organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC), representing the 57 Islamic States, has been tightening its grip on the throat of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Yesterday, 28 March 2008, they finally killed it.
- Privatizing Our Security, Wasting Our Money | OurFuture.org
- Spending will make you happier, but not the way you might think
Research over the past several years has steadily contradicted the capitalistic assumption about human nature. For instance, it is well known that there is only a weak correlation between income level and self-reported happiness across the globe, with the relationship plateauing (meaning that additional money does not increase happiness) at surprisingly low levels of income. And yet, people keep playing the lottery, or its white collar equivalent, the stock market. Why?
Dunn and colleagues have recently published an intriguing paper in Science magazine (21 March 2008) which begins to present us with a surprising answer: apparently, we literally don’t know what makes us happy. The researchers conducted two surveys and one controlled experiment, with the results of each clearly pointing toward the same conclusion: people feel significantly happier when they spend money on others, regardless of how much money they make. For instance, one of the data sets concerned the self-reported happiness of a group of people before and after they got a bonus at work. The results clearly showed that “prosocial spending was the only significant predictor of happiness” after people received the bonus, and this effect “was significant when controlling for bonus amount.” In other words, it didn’t matter how much of a bonus people received.
- The Mighty U.S. Trained And Supported Iraqi Army(Bag News Notes where the pictures tell the story.)
- Contrary to Reports, Nationals Fans Weren’t ‘Booing’ Bush(On a personal note, can't believe they call the team the Nationals, the Senators was a much better name in my opinion.)
- Housing Prototypes: Trinity Buoy Wharf (more on container housing)
- Doctors Support Universal Health Care: Survey -
More than half of U.S. doctors now favor switching to a national health care plan and fewer than a third oppose the idea, according to a survey published on Monday.
.The survey suggests that opinions have changed substantially since the last survey in 2002 and as the country debates serious changes to the health care system.
Of more than 2,000 doctors surveyed, 59 percent said they support legislation to establish a national health insurance program, while 32 percent said they opposed it, researchers reported in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine.
The 2002 survey found that 49 percent of physicians supported national health insurance and 40 percent opposed it
- YouTube - Helter Skelter X (video from our good friend t;he amazing rx)
Comments
Concerning the research on happiness, I just finished a book called Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely. In it he suggests that it isn't money that people are after when they move to a position that pays more, or become dissatisfied with their income. It is the fact that they can no longer feel they are making the money they deserve to make.
I'm constantly amazed at what baffles scientists. Any parent could have told them this and saved them a lot of wasted time. Any volunteer could have told them this too.
Here's the shocker: It only works if you do the giving personally. If you tell yourself you are generous because you vote for representatives that take more of everyone else' money and use a little of it to help the needy, you've only succeeded in limiting your fellow man's ability to be generous. He'll still be happy because there is always something to give, it just won't go as far.
There's no "capitalistic assumption" that money equals happiness. But I guess that means little to someone who calls the stock market the "white-collar equivalent" to the lottery.
No! They weren't booing! They were saying, "Boo-ush!"
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